Difficulties of easiness

Society today rejects old age and suffering as something bad . I think that suffering should be seen as a way a making life better. What is easily received is usually nothing that that can be really valued. If people perceived suffering as something which makes them better then they would not try so much to avoid it. I do not say that making life easier is inherently bad for mankind but the time which was formerly spent in doing work that now is done by machines should be used not for leisure time but for improving conditions of mankind. the time saved thanks to machines is not often spent reasonably. People use it very often for doing bad things. This does not mean that we should return to the age when everything was done by humans,but it is better to do the kind of work which was done by machine then doing bad things . It is important to understand that the amount of time we now have it thanks to other people’s invention and investment of energy. This makes us responsible for using that time reasonably eg not for ourself but for doing good.

Bread and games

The allusion is of course to the ancient roman society. The emperor knew very well what people want and desire to be meek and thus docile. When people satisfy their primitive physiological basic needs , they do not strive for more important and meaningful aims. If the ruler keeps the satisfaction of people to the highest possible level he can be sure that there will be no uprising because uprising stems from the mass discontent. Civil disobedience is powerful only within mass. As long as there is no mass but only a diaspora of free thinkers the one who wields power in his or her hands can be quite safe. This is the reason why basic things are usually cheap. take for example the proverbial bread and wine. The alcohol consumption in Czech Republic is one of the highest in the world. Beer is the cheapest beverage in most restaurants. As long as the drinkers are provided with cheap dose of the drug they will be obedient. As long as people have enough food they will be obedient. As long as people have enough games they will be obedient. As long as the ruler maintain this situation the society will listen to him. One should never be content with the basic needs. One should be striving for more and more. This does not mean that one should want to gain more and more. quite the opposite.  it is necessary to use the world resources to make the world better not to gain as much as possible just for my pleasure. If one is content with pleasure of eating drinking and playing the consequence for him is detrimental. It can never lead and fulfill a meaningful life.

Powerful x powerless

Stanford experiment showed very vividly the difference between inferior and superior.
People given power are very prone to misuse it. The reason for this can be anything – usually physiological difference (even nowadays the “race” issue) – to make difference between dark and light skin, between blue and brown eyes. The issue at stake is not the inner-given difference between people, but how they cooperate with such issues. Saying that the difference which is given (inherent) makes someone more/less important is from its core a stupid one. Assets of human life which are given should never serve as a basis for distingushing people from one another (as M.L. King says in his I have a dream speech: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Opposite view leads to saying that man/woman are better, dark/light skin is beautiful and the other not, blue/brown-eyed people have pure blood, Jews/Germans etc – we have seen to what this has led. What makes human life worth living is not which asset is one born with, but how one uses these gifts in order to make the world a better place. What should be admired is not the “given” – beauty, strength, inteligence, color etc., but on the opposite – how is one capable of using these gifts and making good use of them. What makes human a human is not what and how he or she is born, but what he makes of him/herself. This shows that people formerly and even nowadays seen as inferior can and are capable of same aims and results as the ones formerly seen as superior – the issue at stake is not with what is one born, but what one makes of himself – matter of choice.

Value of human life

In this entry I would like to philosophize a little bit about the value of human life. The most important thing obviously is that it is not as important what, where and how was one born-this should be given no credit (race, sex, iq, physiological appearance), but what one does in life, what one does for others is what matters. In my carrer as a social care worker for people with mental and combined disabilities, I can very easily describe that it is not their handicap that makes these people inferior, but rather their inability to cope with it (very often because they were told that they are stupid, worthless etc.). There are people who are motivated, and although they are handicapped, their effort is seen and these people are capable of greater achievements than the “healthy”, “normal” society. The faulty view that people with a handicap are less capable or inferior stems from the fact that they are very little integrated into Czech school system and society generally – there is still the remnant of the communist regime – to shun them, to shut them somewhere where they will not be seen and will not bother the “correct” society. Children go into special schools and stay there and thus are kept segregated and thus it is so difficult to see them as normal in the sense of having the same value because in adulthood human is less capable to adapt new views. Even the name specal school creates a stigma upon those who has to be there. This also corresponds with the redlining issue. Streets with high Roma percentage in Brno are “reserved” for Roma people and thus create ghettos and this also deepens the segregation issue. It is the same problem as with handicapped – the majority society is not used to see them and encouraged to accept them as “normal” and thus tends to keep them away. Here it can be seen that the more one sees a “different” group, the more is one capable of accepting them – unfortunately this works also vica versa.